POLITICAL LEADERS DIFFER ON COURT RULING INDEPENDENTS WOULD VOTE IN PRIMARIES UNDER SUPREME COURT DECISION

MARIE LATHROP And DAVID ERDMAN, The Morning CallTHE MORNING CALL

Republican area leaders are split over a recent Supreme Court ruling that would allow independent voters to participate in the Republican and Democratic primary elections, while a Democratic leader said the change will spawn fringe candidates.

"Allowing independent voters to waffle around between major parties will fracture the parties," said Lawrence Kisslinger, Republican party chairman in Northampton County.

The Supreme Court's ruling on Thursday killed a Connecticut law that was challenged by Republican leaders who were seeking to broaden the party's appeal by allowing voters not registered in the two major parties to vote in the GOP primaries.

Charles Mackenzie, Lehigh County Republican party chairman, disagreed with the Northampton County GOP leader. Mackenzie said that allowing unaffiliated voters to participate in the major parties' primaries would increase the voter turnout in primary elections.

"We are always looking for ways to increase the overall registration and greater turnouts in the primaries," said Mackenzie.

Glenn Moyer, Lehigh County Democratic party chairman feared the ramifications of allowing greater participation by independents.

"People register in a party that indicates their choice of a policy and philosophy and they choose candidates to uphold that philosophy." said Moyer.

"What's to prevent a strong minority group from coming in and taking over as in the case of the LaRouche candidates in Illinois and which resulted in a national repudiation." Moyer contends that "the party that tries to stand for everything will end up standing for nothing."

Kisslinger said, "Voters in Pennsylvania know the rules and have accepted them. They know the primary process is for individual parties to select among their own whom they wish to represent their party in the general election." He indicated that if unaffiliated voters felt strongly about a candidate they could vote to put a weak candidate on the opposition's general election slate.

Richard Benner of the Northampton County Board of Elections, when contacted about the new ruling, said it would not be hard to change the machinery to include unaffiliated voters. He said it would be no problem to add another line - probably "Independent or Unaffiliated" - below the major party lines. He questioned, however, what "independent or unaffiliated party" will mean.

"Does this mean the Conservative, Consumer, Nazis, Socialist, Communist, and American Indian, etc., parties will all be lumped under one general term."

Benner indicated that the full implications of the new ruling have not yet reached and been analyzed by the State Election Board legal staff.

"It will be revolutionary for the State of Pennsylvania," said Benner, who is surethe local election boards will receive a directive from the state on the proper procedures to follow before the next primary election, May 19, 1987.

Pennsylvania, like most other states, requires that voters be registered Democrats or Republicans to be eligible to vote in the respective party primaries.

The ruling could have sweeping impact on the nomination of candidates by Democrats and Republicans if both parties now open primary voting to independents.

Fifteen other states, including Pennsylvania, joined Connecticut in arguing that mandating open primaries in such cases will undermine state control over the election process.

In last November's general election, the total unaffiliated voter registration in Lehigh County was 8,990.

In the Connecticut case, Justice Thurgood Marshall said for the court that the state law violated the right of free political association guaranteed by the Constitution.

"The (Republican) Party's attempt to broaden the base of public participation in and support for its activities is conduct undeniably central to the exercise of the right of association," Marshall said.

The Connecticut law "limits the party's associational opportunities at the crucial juncture at which the appeal to common principles may be translated into concerted action," he added.

Sen. Lowell Weicker, R-Conn., hailed the ruling as a boon to minority parties and an antidote to voter apathy.

"It's obviously important to the Republicans of this state in the sense that in one fell swoop it broadens our base beyond anything that we could dream of in the future," Weicker said in Hartford.

Weicker, a moderate Republican with appeal to Democrats and independents, led the attack on Connecticut's primary restrictions.

He said the Supreme Court ruling is "obviously important to the people of thestate of Connecticut in that I think it's going to take what have been abysmally low figures of voter turnout and turn that around."

Attorney General Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut said the decision is a death blow to "the principle that state legislatures, not political parties, should set the rules governing elections."

The ruling could have sweeping impact on the nomination of candidates by Democrats and Republicans if both parties now open primary voting to independents.

The states that supported Connecticut's defense of its primary voting statute were Arizona, Delaware, Florida, Illinois, Louisiana, Maine, Nevada, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Tennessee and Wyoming.

In a dissenting opinion, Justice Antonin Scalia said the Connecticut law was aimed only at assuring that voters who refused to enroll in a political party could not help choose its candidates.